A “fellow ex-pat Canadian”:http://www.claritycp.com/exec_profile_jb.html lent me a book – “Mondo Canuck”:http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0132630885/qid%3D1112610903/702-9110123-7216867 which made me feel more Canadian than I had in years. It’s a compendium of Canadian popular culture which sparked many memories. I found myself indulging in a favourite Canadian recreation – looking for famous people and organizations I didn’t realise were Canadian and I was also reminded that I am (loosely) connected to several Canadian phenomena.

My parents live in Oakville for example so I knew all about the importance of nearby “Sheridan College”:http://www1.sheridaninstitute.ca/ for Hollywood’s animation industry but I also know several people who worked at “Alias”:http://www.alias.com/ – animation software giant – including “Reid Ellis”:http://rae.tnir.org/ who used to host this blog.

Another friend of mine – “Harald”:http://blog.cfrq.net/chk/ – (present host of this blog) knows several of the people from the bizarre Canadian comedy sensation “Kids in the Hall”:http://www.kithfan.org/ (I met them once).

I serialised “Douglas Coupland”:http://www.coupland.com/’s excellent early novel “Microserfs”:http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.01/microserfs.html in a computer magazine I worked on and my mother knows his aunt.

Now that I am a media studies academic I feel as if I have some connection to “Marshall McLuhan”:http://archives.cbc.ca/IDD-1-69-342/life_society/mcluhan/ as well – if only because a friend of mine has studied him extensively and I recently attended two lectures on his work.

I went to the “same college at university”:http://www.trinity.utoronto.ca/ as “Atom Egoyan”:http://www.egofilmarts.com/ and “Michael Ignatieff”:http://ksgfaculty.harvard.edu/Michael_Ignatieff (though not at the same time).